Background Noise
by SapSorrow
Summary: Snippets from the life of Thomas and Lucille Sharpe, yes it's mostly pwp. All possible trigger warnings for Crimson peak apply, chapters individually tagged for warnings.
1. Chapter 1

**1.**

It starts in so many ways. She has her back to him as she plays and he watches the back of her neck, the curve of her hairline, and wants to touch. She's so contained; so still, aside from the fingers that fly across the keys; but he knows how soft she would feel to touch and he does. He comes up behind her so quietly she would have been startled if she did not always know exactly where he was, where he had been, where, to the moment, he was going to be.

She smiles when his fingers trace around her hair, his hand on her shoulder, more possessive than he knows. She smiles up at the portrait on the wall- _see, mother?-_ because every time this happens she feels a little bit like she has won. He steals the smile from her when his hand slips around to cup her breast, so gently at first she almost makes a sound and loses her place – just for a moment, skipping a note or maybe three- and he notices, and this time he is the one who smiles and his voice is low in her ear when he whispers –

" _Keep playing."_

And she does, and it is not just at the piano, and she smiles because she understands a challenge better than almost anything. She is good at games but she wonders when he became such a match for her. She knows she is lost if she makes a noise but she closes her eyes as her fingers skim the keys, and oh she tried so hard to be a stone, to carve herself out of black marble, but she is soft in his hands as the sinking red clay. The barest hint of his fingernail scrapes her nipple through the velvet and she cannot; she hisses and stops and he is remorseless, in her ear again –

"Start again. From the _beginning._ "

Her lip curls. She almost growls, but her heart is smiling like only he can make it and she sighs, clenches her fist, stretches her fingers out again and resumes, her voice as idle as she can make it –

"Where did you ever learn such wickedness?"

"From you of course. You know it was. It's always you."

She hears those words _always you_ and clasps them to her like a talisman. He does not let her glow in its light for too long, bending over her to nuzzle and then kiss the back of her neck. She closes her eyes and carries on playing, wants to ignore everything so as to finish at the same time as wanting simply to delight in him and nothing else. The piano suddenly seems like a curse on her. And his fingers are working deftly at her throat because he knows this dress too well, knows how to break her out of it without even having to look and she cannot even blame him for any of his damnable skill when she knows she taught him all of it.

"You're so close to the end –" he whispers as she reaches the last part of the piece, and she cannot help but feel a thrill of something rather like pride to know how often he must have listened and paid attention, always perfectly attentive to what she does without the interest ever getting in her way or being unwanted. She smiles, but then –

"Wouldn't it be sad if something made you stop now?" he adds wickedly, as one hand slides down inside her corset. She makes a strangled sound that is not entirely ladylike and almost says something terribly vulgar. She stops herself just in time, knowing that in this mood he could easily consider it an interruption worthy of making her start again. He pries her laces apart at the back until she breathes out hard, pushing her breasts into his hand, wanting to hate him and never capable of that. Anything but that.

"When you get to the end –" he tortures her so calmly, twisting his spare hand into her hair and loosening it steadily and deftly – "I am going to fuck you senseless". He drops it out so casually she has to grit her teeth to keep from screaming.

"You will scream –" as though he can tell; she supposes he can – "I'll make you scream so loudly even _she_ will hear". She shudders to hear something so uncannily close the way she always likes to imagine it and rushes through the last few bars with angry, trembling fingers, twisting around violently on the piano stool the second she is done and slapping him in the face. It was either that or kiss him and she had as little awareness of what she had been about to do than he had, because he blinks at her; shocked, but not that much, and catches her wrist hard before she can do it again, his other hand still in her hair and pulling now just enough to hurt a little but never too much. He scrambles awkwardly into her lap, kissing her not awkwardly at all, with trembling, hungry lips and she pushes all of the anger and frustration he has built up in her into the kisses she gives back.

She can feel his cock pressing hard against her and her fingers itch to take it in her hand but he is still intent on meanness, holding her hand tight even though he wants her so much, she can see it in his eyes. She can see an answering blackness in her own eyes reflected in his and not for the first time she wonders disjointedly which of them is which; which parts are hers and which are his. She tries to remember what she sometimes knows – that they are all hers.

For a moment she almost says _please_ but he will not let her without serving her an excuse to do so, whispering instead _beg me_ as he dips his head to her breasts, spilling them out from over her laces, his breath turning the nipple hard as he takes it gently in his teeth. She shakes her spinning head, knowing that she will anyway, almost whimpering as he licks and nibbles at her and her _please_ comes out in a rushing sigh.

"Please _what?"_

"Please fuck me brother, please I –"

But it is enough and she has never known him capable of waiting too long. He lets her go and she falls to the floor like water, no sooner on her hands and knees than he is behind her. She can feel his hardness against her and the groan he makes with more than just breath and he starts to say something but the only word that comes out is –

"Always –" She knows he wants to carry on the game, to mock her for giving in so fast – _always so desperate,_ she knows should have been his sentence but she likes _always,_ there is no way in which she can interpret that one word that does not sound good. His voice wavers and breaks and he pushes into her in one long shove, thrusting into her rough and shuddering and just for a second she swirls apart and comes back together and she comes back together _right._ As if this could be the one thing in her life that is _not_ wrong, in defiance of all logic and it's impossible to think or know anything beyond her brother being inside her, again, where he should be. But she makes herself speak, to let him know at least that she is not coming undone, whether she is or not, she hisses –

"Now who's desperate?" as though he _did_ say that out loud and he forgets or does not know that he did not because he never needs to speak all of what he means for her to always know what the rest of his line will be. She wrote his life's script out for him long ago but just for now he cannot care either, because she is all there is and he cannot get close enough even now. He pulls her back by the hair but she follows so quickly it never hurts; she can know, just for now, that he will never hurt her, never lie to her and as she sits back she finds she is staring right up at their mother again and she trembles as though she could come just from the victory she feels right now, but instead her lips just curve and she thinks _yes mother, take a good long look;_ thinks it so hard she might have said it aloud.

She arches back and his face presses into her neck, his arms winding around her, holding her close, as close as they could possibly be and when she too soon begins to shake in readiness he pauses inside her long enough to whisper out half broken orders –

"Wait – not yet – together – always together –" he moves inside her, fingers stroking between her legs and she breathes out her echo –

"Never apart," - pushing into his hand, her body shaking and tense and singing out in relief so hard it is almost pain and he comes only seconds behind her, coming into her hot and wet as blood and she looks back at the picture on the wall hoping that between them they can scream loud enough to reach the grave.

And after he slips out of her, she stays in his lap with her head against his chest and just for a moment he strokes her hair and she feels quite small, almost as though he _could_ look after her, as though she could relinquish some degree of control. But she knows she cannot, even when he lifts her in his arms like a bride or a child and carries her to the fireplace.

The nights are long here, spare logs piled up high in readiness and there are already blankets piled up themselves by the far from the number of times they have fallen asleep down here.

_x_

 **I really have no defence for this 'ship other than it being hella hot. :-P I have tagged it as non –con even though it's not necessarily in this instance. I think from the nature of the relationship and how it all began it has to be always considered as dub con at best. But I did want to write something that puts Thomas a little bit more in charge of things than I know he really was, make it a little bit more mutual perhaps because I like to think he didn't 100 % hate it. But uh yeah, I feel bad as hell for writing this and worse for posting it. I may write more. :-)**


	2. Chapter 2

**This is a sort of "what if…." idea I had, set whilst Thomas is on the search for wife no.1. We saw so much in the film of Lucille being a jealous little potato that I really wanted to play with it being the other way round, whether you think that would happen or not. So here. Is total porns.**

 **2.**

They don't speak from the moment he abruptly turns to leave right up until they get back to the hotel. She follows him out of the ballroom in angry silence and they refuse to make eye contact as the carriage rattles down the cobbled streets. Occasionally he will look up when she is not looking, see how thinly pressed her lips are, how narrow her eyes, and his gaze falls back to his hands, trying not to twist them in his lap. She looks at him when he looks away, wanting him to feel the weight of scorn in her eyes.

"I can't," he says, as soon as they are alone. She follows him into his hotel room and stands in front of the door with her arms folded – "I can't do this".

"Yes," she says coldly. "You can". He notices she does not even sound like it pleases her. He shakes his head, not knowing what to say.

"What exactly –" she says, with a calm that worries him, pulling off her gloves as she speaks in a set of precise tense movements – "Is it you can't do? Attract a girl or marry one? It certainly seemed to me like you had your pick of any woman in the room."

"I can't – I'm not – I don't feel _anything_ –not for any of them –"

" _Good._ At least that's something."

"But I couldn't – _marry_ someone I don't –"

"Are you ill, Thomas? Have you lost the entire plan and purpose of this venture? You're not marrying for _love_ and if I thought for one moment –" Lucille's lip twists in a sneer that goes all the way to her eyes – "I'd kill you both without a second thought."

"But I'd have to – there would be things I had to do – as a husband and I can't – not with –"

For the first time she smiles and her face almost relaxes, for a second at least;

"You do _not_ have to. Besides you're lying. I saw how easily you flirted with half those girls tonight." She gives an injured sniff and turns her back on him, forcing him to come towards her, to come quietly and a little remorseful.

"Sister you know I –" he reaches out a hand, but she turns around quickly, knocking it aside.

"I don't know _anything_ Thomas, until you show me! For god's sake, sometimes I think you should be the one in the dress! Maybe –" her voice changes, dangerously – "Maybe I should marry instead, hmm? Maybe you'd like to be the one to watch while I make love to some stranger –"

"No –" he whispers, looking up at her fully for the first time, a fire in his eyes that she smiles to see; she has been trying to light it ever since they got back. She smiles because she knows she's got him now.

"Maybe I should," she murmurs – "Maybe I should be the one to dance and smile and trade kisses to win a man's affection and fortune –"

"No," he states again, fiercely this time.

"I could. I know how to deal with men. Maybe I'd let them touch me like only you do. And of course I wouldn't have the options after marriage that you would, would you like that better brother? Would you?"

"No!" He growls it this time, grabbing her arm and pushing her back against the wall – "You're mine, nobody else touches you, not ever, you're _mine."_

She smiles triumphantly because she knows it, of course, she just wants to hear him say it; it is worth every moment of baiting him to make him respond in a way that actually scares her a little. He pins her to the wall with just one hand around her wrist, locking an arm around her neck to yank her face to his as if she ever wanted to move away, kissing her furiously, angrily, as though his claim really needs to be reasserted. She rubs his cock through his trousers, feeling it wickedly hard against her, wondering when that happened. He told her once he was never otherwise when she was anywhere nearby but she supposes that has to be an exaggeration and does not believe it. He hisses at her touch, fingers fumbling at her throat, impatient to get to her skin. Her clothes are always such a nightmare he is miserable with need by the time he gets them apart, sick with it, nuzzling, licking, biting at her throat and shoulders, dizzyingly nauseated at the thought of other hands than his on the soft pale skin.

"I'd kill them," he whispers, snarling it into her ear, "anyone so much as laid a hand on you I'd cut it off, butcher them and fuck you in the mess, again and again I'd fuck you - until you break."

"I don't break."

"Then I'd try harder."

He pushes her dress down around her waist and when he moves back to take off his shirt she wriggles out of it. He can never work out how she does that, shedding her clothes like a snake shedding skin. She carries a small sharp knife inside her corset which she uses now to cut open the laces at the front and he watches, hands working mechanically on his own clothes as he stares at her transfixed. She carries spare laces everywhere she goes. He watches her skin emerge, her breasts come free, and reaches for her so like a child that she almost laughs. But then he lifts her into his arms to carry her to the bed and it surprises her for the thousandth time that he can do this, remembering a time when she could pick _him_ up. Now he looks down at her adoringly and just a little sad, and she reaches a hand to cup his face, to take the sadness away. He shakes his head;

"You will never let me just be good, will you?"

"Oh little brother –" she whispers taunting, into his ear, nails digging into his shoulders – "Dear, sweet little brother, you talk so hard about being good but you always call me sister when you want me – I've heard the sick things you say when you're inside me –"

He growls softly, slithering on top of her, crushing them together, hot skin against skin, sliding the full length of his cock against the wetness between her legs;

"Now," he insists. "I need to be inside you now, oh god sister you're so wet for me."

"You're so hard for me, fuck – put it in me brother, slam it in, destroy me –"

He gives a groan as he shoves into her that is almost a shout, her body taking him in so perfectly it is as though they were made for each other, and they worked out long ago that they were. Buried deep inside her, he can no longer keep a hold of any of those ideals to be good, cannot keep a grasp on anything beyond his cock in his sister's cunt. He thrusts and thrusts savagely, holding her by the hips hard enough to bruise, even now needing to be closer, knowing he could come in her in seconds whilst wanting to stay inside forever.

"And - " she carries on. "If I let someone else do this to me –" it is worth it – she knew it would be – worth it even if it were only to see the way his face contorts;

"Bitch," he slaps her- it is as much as he will ever really hurt her;

"I'd kill them –" he growls, almost hopelessly into her throat – "I'd kill you – fuck you until you were dead and still not stop, you're mine Lucille, only mine." He slams into her with almost feral brutality and her one hand strokes the back of his neck in a curiously comforting gesture whilst the other rakes scratches down his back. They both balance on an arc of perfection, shivering in the bliss of being together, crackling in bittersweet understanding that completion is close, wanting it and not wanting it to be over all at once. When it comes it is cataclysmic and the world shakes with trying not to scream. He slams his hand over her mouth and only this reminds him that he cannot scream either; that the hotel walls are thin, even if it is only her unused room on one side.

Afterwards he lies with his head nestled into her hip, his hand tracing spirals across her thigh.

"I'll do it," he says.

"I know," she replies.

"You shouldn't make me jealous like that."

"I will though."

He presses a kiss to the top of her leg, lips coming away wet from the both of them.

"I've made a terrible mess of you."

"Yes" she smiles. "You should clean that up."

He smiles against her skin and dips his head.

_x_

 **I don't know if Thomas would really get so jealous if their roles were reversed but I kinda think he would, I certainly** ** _want_** **to think he would!**

 **Also who heard that g.o.t moment where I almost had Lucille quote Cersei? I could almost hear her do "I should wear the armour – and you the dress". But then I remembered she said that to Robert not Jaime so it was a bit less relevant. :-) Ugh just imagine the Sharpe/ Lannister double date with those four – Lucille and Jaime high fiving and shouting "THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE". I'm sorry. I am ill, all my fandoms are bleeding together in a big incestuous heap. :-P**


	3. Chapter 3

**Angst and porns! This one's hella traumatic I guess. In which Thomas says something stupid and Lucille goes to a bad place and also, weirdly - graphic porn! Trigger warnings for mental health concerns, references to past abuse, rape, institutionalisation, and trauma reactions to these - the whole works essentially, you have been warned – just cause I like upsetting myself doesn't mean I want to upset the rest of you!**

 **3.**

"Sometimes, I don't think you love me at all."

She turns away with an injured sniff – and it looks so staged, whether she means it or not, and she probably does but that does not make it better – that it annoys him. Otherwise, he knows he would not have said what he did. But she does this so often. Not quite every day, but every argument they ever have, she manages to bring this out- and just because he does not doubt that so much of it comes from a place of terrible fear and concern does not mean it does not grate on him. More than grate; it has the sting she intends every time, because after all he loves her so damn much. It tears at his heart like an animal inside and hearing it denied makes him speak thoughtlessly at best.

"Lucille, that's crazy!"

As soon as he says it he knows what he has done and he closes his eyes and cringes, but it's too late; he's said it now and he can taste the bile in his throat from his words. It no longer matters what she said, what they had been arguing about in the first place; he should not have said it. He sees her freeze, no act this time, her hand stills in mid-air for far too long, something twitches in the side of her face and she is frozen stiff for several beats too long. What did he do? Why did he say that? He has made this mistake before and she went still for so long he started to become afraid he had lost her.

Eventually she blinks, turns her head just a fraction, but she does not really look at him and there is nothing in her eyes. She has not come _back_ from wherever his stupid words have pushed her, and the absence is chilling to hear in her voice when she replies through tight lips;

"Is it? Good night, Thomas."

She walks very sedately towards the door, head just a little too high, and he watches her for a second with worms in his belly before calling to her before she walks out the room;

"Lucille don't! I'm- I'm sorry –"

"Are you?" She blinks again slowly, once; it is like being studied by a mantis; he thought it would be better than her icy restraint but it is not – " _Are you?"_ She shrieks it this time, face twisting in a terrifying contortion. "Tell me Thomas how could you be possibly be sorry when you don't even know what the damn word means?" He frowns for a second before he realizes she means _crazy_ not _sorry,_ although he suspects she does not think he is really that either.

"I didn't mean –" his heart sinks. Going on is not going to help him.

"Didn't mean _what_ Thomas? You didn't. Mean. _What?"_

Saying what he was meaning to say is a vile option beneath those eyes, and she is running silent tears through her fury which only makes it worse. But staying silent is no better.

"I never meant _you_ were –" he closes his eyes – "Just that what you said was –"

Dancing round the word is a thousand times worse than letting it slip.

"Well –" her lips curl, twitching at the same time – "That's alright then." She sneers. "Open your fucking eyes Thomas. I'm going now. You can look at something _nice._ "

He does, but it is already too late and she is gone. He hears her foot-tread creak on the stairs and imagines he can hear her swallow a sob though no further sound escapes her.

-x-

He sits by the fire for a long time, feeling nothing of its warmth and sightlessly watching it die. He cannot bring himself to do more than poke it to speed its eventual ashy crumble. He sighs as he rises, heart heavy, unsure quite where to go. In theory he has a room, though he never uses it, but can he go to their shared bed now? He wonders if she will be asleep, crying, silent and still, unsleeping in the dark, missing him or wanting him there or curled around herself with a knife to stab him with if he got too close.

She would not hurt him. He knows that if nothing else. He decides he cannot possibly make things worse by trying.

The room is dark but for a candle burning on his side of the bed. He almost stumbles on an angry pile of her clothes beside the bed. He can see the shape of her, curled into a ball with its back to him but cannot tell if she is asleep or pretending. He crawls into bed, wearing just his shirt, turning his face to the spot it belongs against her shoulder. She flinches slightly, stiffens all over again, and it is almost worse than if she had stabbed him. He starts to put an arm around her and she makes a sound like a little whimper. He knows it is his fault but it breaks his heart when she edges away from him. She must be clinging to the very edge of the bed. He does not try to get closer for some time.

Lucille stares straight ahead of her into the dark. It is not quite the darkest kind of dark and the candle flame reminds her where she is. She used to leave a light for Thomas when they were little and he was afraid of the dark and she tells him nowadays that she does this still out of habit, not liking to admit that she is the one who wants it. She likes shadows and fluttering dark shades, but absolute blackness is intolerable. It makes her prickle until it feels like her skin is tiny knives sticking out all over like a hedgehog's spines. Someone is always watching her in her dark, something is always about to happen. She is all spines and pins, she can practically feel them breaking out of her skin. When she moves away it is at least partly so that Thomas does not get hurt.

Not that he would not deserve it. Not after what he called her. The spikes flick inwards sometimes, stabbing and prickling through her chest. She supposes she can take that rather than hurt him; she has taken so much else after all. She tries not to think about it. She is trapped in a cage of thinking about it. There are moths in her head, beating heavy wings fast and thundering against the inside of her skull. She lies still for a while, as still as she can be; she taught herself back then to breathe quietly, not to be noticed, and she does it again almost easily whenever something sends her back there. She can feel him watching her in the dark, trying to work her out; she can feel it in every nerve, tingling with crawling tension. She reminds herself where she is, who he is, who she is; they come to her in that order.

"Go away, Thomas," she sighs eventually; just on the point of his reaching out to touch her, though she only half knows it. It would be best for him not to be around her now, best for her too– she supposes, if she could get any grasp of herself as a separate entity.

"No."

"Why?"

"I want –" he touches her shoulder with tentative fingers. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, does not flinch.

"What?"

"I just want to make it better".

"You can't."

"Lucille –"

"No."

"Turn round".

It hurts so much, her head; it hurts so much, all the moths and noise and screaming and tension and alone. But alone in a cell is better than visited in one sometimes. Bright and then dark and bright again, she is not sure what that is ever supposed to achieve. Silence can be so loud, solitary can be so screaming, blistering white and sanatorium green. Colours can be so _loud._ It's not safe to move, best to stay still. It's not safe to breathe. Alone in the smallest room with nothing there to distract the addled brain, _that_ is the thing that addles the brain _._ She wonders how long it will be. If she will ever leave.

"Lucille –"

But she _has_ left, hasn't she? She's been home two years and more, she should be done with this by now. Nobody there ever said her name like that, touched her like that. Not a single sensation in the place that was pleasant or kind. But she's not there now, she's not, she's _here_ and he is here and didn't they promise each other that everything else was just background noise? She turns over slowly; it feels like such effort and it was _years_ ago but she can feel the bruises again like yesterday, and everything hurts. She turns but she cannot look at him, just buries her face in his shoulder and she might be crying but she does not know.

"I –" she says but she does not know, and he strokes her hair and back and cheek and he might be telling her everything is alright, will be alright and she knows he did not mean what he said, that he knows she isn't crazy really and she should have stopped doing this years ago it's just a stupid _word_ it doesn't mean anything.

But it does.

"Tell me," she whispers "Tell me you love me."

"I love you."

He says it so easily, she wants to doubt it, wants to suspect it, knows she _should_ be suspicious but there is enough of her left that trusts to grab at it hungrily.

"Again."

"I love you."

"Tell me you need me."

"I need you."

"Tell me you want me."

"I want you."

"Again." She knows he does, can hear it in his voice, feel it in his hands and lips and cock, but she needs to hear it again.

"I want you Lucille. I need you. Every inch of you, please –"

"Every inch?" she echoes bitterly "every horrible injured inch?"

"You're not horrible, sister –"

"You know what they did?" she cannot stop; she would never normally do this, never hurt him with the knowledge but god sometimes it has to out or it will scald a path out from her chest, searing and tearing her flesh – "They beat me. They raped me. They hurt me, so many times, hurt me with their chains and canes and cocks – why would anyone want what they spat back out? Why would you –"

"How could I not?"

It is so obvious to him, so simple. She closes her eyes and breathes and wishes it _was_ simple. He kisses her forehead, eyelids, the corners of her lips, running down her neck, following with his hands and _this_ is simple, easy, yes, she gives herself to it as she gives herself to music, carried by and controlling it all at once.

"If I could just kill them all I would," he growls it, furious, vicious, loving her so tenderly, trying to kiss her, throat and breasts and belly, everywhere at once, kiss every scar and make it better, every beautiful scar – "Anyone who dared touch you, my beautiful sister –"

He slips a hand between her legs when they open with an instinct she does not quite realise she has, stroking her there almost without thinking, as she has touched him so many times to comfort and arouse and he smiles to feel her respond, to know she wants him too, that he can maybe make it better and he is so hard for her now and she is not afraid anymore, not gone; but she started to come back as soon as she started to cry and now she is here, and he is here, and that's _good,_ the only good thing she can find.

"Beautiful –" she echoes in almost innocent, wide eyed disbelief.

"Yes," he promises, "So beautiful Lucille, so lovely –"

"You want me –" she says it slowly, almost as though catching up.

"Yes," he groans, "Yes, god sister so much."

She curses, the pleasure of hearing him say it is such a sudden feral thing; he jerks against her, almost spilling himself to hear her say _fuck._

"Fuck yes, put it in me, brother, please, slam your cock in me, make me come, make your sister come, get your seed all over me, drench me with it –"

Impossible for him to hear an order like that without needing to be inside her in a moment and he is and it is all he can think about; his cock in her cunt, such fierce urgent hardness bathed in the soft warmth of her, plunging in and out over and over again, long savage thrusts that sink him to the hilt inside her and she clings to him, limbs winding around him like vines, whispering affirmatives in a rapid litany into his face as he kisses her fiercely at the same time. For once his eyes are open and hers are closed; because she cannot look at him just yet and see how perfect he is, it is enough to feel it, to remember what pleasant sensations felt like. She can swim in the sensation of it, his hands, his tongue, his cock inside her and they can be almost close enough to bring her back to herself. She could almost know what it felt like to be whole and more than half wishes they could stay joined like this forever.

He looks at her though, and it crushes at his heart to know that she cannot see how beautiful she is. He cannot even tell her and have her know it for longer than in that instance. And then the thought of anyone having ever touched her with anything other than perfect reverence and devotion kills him. But he cannot hide from it, cannot un-see her scars. All he can do is put kisses in their place. He can hide from a lot but refuses to be weak enough to ignore all she has suffered for him; he wishes he had a fraction of her strength, or could have taken a fraction of her pain. He cannot, but he can give her this pleasure to rub it all out, at least for a while.

It is giving, it is also taking, back and forth one to the other. She feels powerful when he is inside her, and also something like his equal; they cannot be different at this time, not even two creatures, and he is the same, stronger, more like her, twisting together until they cannot know where one starts and the other begins.

"Stay," she whispers in his ear. "Stay inside me forever".

It is forever; at the time it is always forever. It is also far too little time, painfully short moments. But release is so sweet, she is flying with it, beating her wings against the bed, heading towards the candle flame and he is with her, beside her, inside her, part of her always flying with her, always together –

"Never apart," she whispers as they fall, together, twisting awkwardly as they roll into the sheets, so they never have to separate.

"Never apart," he echoes. She lives in fear of the place in which her echo does not come back to her, but for now she is done being afraid of places; there is nowhere else than here.

"Again," she says and does not have to wait long before he can make it so. She breathes out in blessed relief that he can always understand her without her ever having to say more than a few words of the relevant sentence.

After the second time, they lie, cooling in the sheets, she lies half against him, head under his arm, as though she has wriggled up beside a curiously shaped cushion.

"Are you –" he says – he wants to say _better, alright_ but they both will not quite do.

"I'm here," she says, and that is better. He rubs circles in her forehead, gently at first but she wriggles and smiles and murmurs –

"That's – nice". He knows how she has always told him there are moths in her head when it feels strange, when something hurts, when she goes away inside herself, there are always black moths there when she comes back. He has never been entirely certain the extent to which she means this and still does not quite know how to ask. Instead he just strokes and rubs at her head to make them go away.

"Moths?"

"Hmmm," she nods – "Not as many as there were".

She says that when he rubs her head they come out of her ears and when they are gone her head is less full, less cluttered, confused, hurting – all the emotions that bash around in there on buzzing wings. She closes her eyes and smiles sleepily and he keeps rubbing. There will always be one or two that get away she says, but he can keep trying all the same.

_x_

 **So the original plan was just hot argument then sex but then it all went angsty, I am sorry, hopefully the end result ain't too much of a big mess. This is very much from my own experience of getting triggered and my knowledge also huge hatred of institutionalization. I do figure everybody elses reactions will be individual to them but yeah, for me, this turned into a bit of an exploration of what can happen when seriously triggered. I also appreciate sex is not generally a great idea under these circumstances, but when have these two ever done things right? I'll try and write something less awful next time. :-)**

 **Random fyi, I have bees, not moths, but obsly I gave Lucille moths because duh. They do go out the ears when rubbed away though. :-)**


	4. Chapter 4

**Urgh so this is literally just pure trauma and angst, no porn even this time I'm sorry - set just before the trip to America, just after Enola, but with flashbacks. So many trigger warnings – madhouse awfulness, rape, abuse, depression, social anxiety, animal slaughter and a briefly referenced dead baby towards the end – just getting a heap of Lucille's madhouse years feels out of my system so I can move on to cheerier things later! It really is just a pile of grief, feel free to skip, normal service really will resume next instalment. :-)**

 **4.**

"So" she says, brightly "What more have you gathered about our Miss McMichael?"

"Well" he smiles, with a misguided attempt at levity – "She's not very pretty, is she?"

He had meant it as a sort of joke, something to cheer Lucille up, but the look she gives him is so withering he deflates at once, knowing how forced her brightness is, wondering why she bothered when he knows how tense and strained she is, how much she hates these social gatherings.

"What more have you gathered that's _useful?"_ she amends, tersely, as though talking to a child. She always does this. Sometimes it irks him, but never that much, he probably deserves it and he finds himself, at this moment, as so often, in tune enough with her mood not to react to it. She sits down wearily on the side of his bed, rubbing her forehead very slightly in a jerky two fingered gesture he often notices when she has had to deal with the world. He wanders about the hotel room, hanging their coats up, fixing things here and there.

"Well she's rich" he nods, this was after all, the main pre-requisite "From somewhere quite new in America, a little place in New York state. New money of course, but they all are over there. She has an older brother – but it seems like she'll still inherit the family fortune, he seems to have made his own, he's a doctor, she said."

He catches the scowl that no sooner flickers on Lucille's face but she suppresses it;

"I don't like doctors" she shrugs just a little, pushing it off quickly, but not before he has noticed and felt that little stab of pain for her he feels so often. There is that sudden distance in her eyes as though she could at any moment fall away from him, back into the past.

 _She fought them all the way to Lancaster. By the time they reached the asylum gates they had already branded her "difficult". It took four of them to get her through the front door and from there straight into solitary in restraints. It should have been enough but they beat her when she was down just to make sure. Later on that first evening the doctors paid her their first visit._

"I know" he stops pacing and sits down beside her. For once he has picked the best thing he could say; it pulls her back and she turns to him with a faint smile.

"It's not important. It's not as though we'll have to get to know them for long."

"There is just one problem" he decides he may as well come out with it now. She looks at him silently – _go on._

"They go back to America in a week. I don't think it's enough time."

She stands up angrily, giving a disgusted little breathe out.

"It's not."

 _They put her to work in the gardens with a huge great monster of a man who pushes her down in the flowerbed one day and rapes her. He is stupid and clumsy and brutal, but he knows how to do this one thing, cramming his cock into her leering and grinning while she lies there dead, sinking into the soil, her body no more than fuel for the broken flowers. She had thought she could have liked working out here._

She's here, but she's elsewhere. It troubles him when he knows the other place hurts her, has been there through her nightmares and the tears she does not know she lets slip in her sleep. She will so rarely talk to him about it later. All he can do is stop her, bring her back when he can.

"What do you want us to do?"

It's the right move, he knows, putting it in her hands like this right now, because she nods, her clenched fists soften and she stands still, quiet, thinking for a moment. A not quite happy smile twitches ruefully at the corners of her lips and then she turns to him –

"Thomas, didn't you always want to see the New World?"

 _They punish her for the broken flowers later, punish her for her filthy behaviour. He cannot help it of course, but she should have known better. They beat her for being a slut, telling her she must love it as they rape her again. She supposes she must like it, after all she never cries any more. They make her work with him until the job is done and until it is he rapes her every day, knowing that he can, and she lies still and absent, dying with every thrust, smelling the wet leaves and the soil, turning her head into the earth, imagining sinking down, down beneath the compost, flowers and grass growing over her, turning her face away into the damp and earth and choking on it, wishing she could go all the way away. She imagines crawling back up out of the grave, hands and mouth full of this earth and she thinks dear god, when I die, let me not come back, let me not come back. Then, every night the doctors do it again, they hardly need an excuse anymore, how many young, highborn girls do they have after all?_

"Well I – spoke of it – but you – I mean – you wouldn't –"

She smiles, sits back down on the bed, beside him now, takes his hands in hers and draws his head down to her chest. Even though he is not the one who needs comforting right now, he knows that this helps her more than if he had tried to make it the other way around.

"I used to see the sea" she murmurs – "On a clear day you could see all the way across the bay, when they let me out – I used to think of being lost on it, a tiny thing in a vast space. Frightening – but – it felt like being free, just to imagine it. Wind in the sails, drifting but with purpose – like we always sing –" It is only ever her who sings, but he does not correct her. She does not stand correction well these days. He thinks it is far too soon to be travelling again. She has been so sad since Enola – well it was not Enola making her sad; there is a tiny coffin in the back of his mind that he cannot bring himself to think about. He tried to tell her to give it more time, that they could live off Enola's fortune for longer and they _could_ have done but she struggles to stay still these days, even though she hates to be out of the house at the same time.

"There is nothing I would not do for you" she says and he knows how true it is, he supposes he must be ungrateful to feel guilt over the things she does, he should be gratified to be one of surely few people in the world to know for sure that their love would kill for them. She sounds almost proud of it

 _After that they put her on a stint in the slaughterhouse, she could only assume as some kind of added punishment. The idea that this might faze her has her laughing all the way there, like the mad woman they so clearly want her to be. It is a punishment, has to be, she is the only woman in the place, but for once it is not a problem; quite the reverse in fact – they only put the safer inmates down here of course, and besides nobody makes an unwelcome move on a girl with a cleaver in her hand; and when they see the look in her eye that accompanies it, they stay doubly away. It is here that she learns to enjoy the killing. She looks the animals in the eye and does it hard and fast. It is a kindness, she thinks, a strength that nobody around her has – none of them would look her in the eye when they were hurting her. She comes to enjoy the swing and thud and crunch of the cleaver and close her ears to the animal cries of pain. How could she not enjoy it? It is making her untouchable, something she has not been seen as since she arrived. Even outside of the slaughterhouse, she begins to see people looking at her with a wary kind of respect. Or maybe it is not respect, just a kind of fear – she could not entirely care. Even the doctors and the staff begin to change towards her, seeing her proficiency in this task as some sort of proof that her "treatment" is working. It seems that murder, first seen as her madness, was now being regarded as her rehabilitation. She realises, as she had not fully before, how insane that makes them, how woefully inadequate they are. All her old insecurities and self-loathing begin to run side by side with a sense of superiority far crazier than anything she had entered the place with._

"I know" he says and would say more but she says again –

"Everything I do is for you, you know that don't you?" He moves against her, curling into her, holding her as she holds him. He does know of course, she has told him so many times. He wants to tell her the same, but fears she would look at him like he did not mean it and he can just imagine how inadequate it would sound, instead he just replies –

"I know. I love you Lucille."

She smiles properly for the first time that night because, in all the lies that twist up her heart and that she feels tugging at his every promise, this at least is true. It has always been true and always will be. And of all her own utterances she can only quite trust herself to make this one.

"Yes. I love you too."

Because they fall together, falling in place, his hand against her chest and his eyes raising to hers. When he kisses her it brings her all the way back, beyond recent tragedy and awful long ago memory. It is the one thing that can hold her in the present, that can bring her back to life. It is, she thinks, like a fairy tale, the very core of how those stories work. When he kisses her she can be the heroine for once and not the villain, she can be the girl he sees her as; she can almost, if she closes her eyes, be beautiful. In amongst every other aspect of her this one thing will always be good, and beautiful. Perfection.

_x_

 **Okay yeah I literally said last chapter that the next would be less horrible but I lied. On the plus I have two chapters started, neither of which are of the distressing kind so when I say next time we'll be back with some merrily scheduled porn I DO mean it!**

 **I should quickly explain that I have my own definitive head canon that the institution Lucille ended up in was Lancaster's Old Moor Hospital, the first and largest psychiatric asylum in the north west of England. Nowadays patients from the Cumbria (Cumberland) area still get sent to the replacement facility built in its old grounds so it's not a huge stretch to think that Cumbria people might have gone there 100 years ago. Also I used to be able to see the place from where I lived for years in Lancs so it's something I can work with. :-)**

 **.** **(should anyone be interested)**


	5. Chapter 5

**Okay, brief explanation, I started writing a sort of** ** _first time_** **chapter and this was gonna come straight after it, set chronologically just after, but I'm struggling with that chapter so jumped straight to this one instead. So this is when she's eighteen and he's sixteen and they've not been long back at Allerdale. Porn.**

 **5.**

That sweet first time opens a floodgate he knows can never be closed again, as long as he lives. He has always loved her, he knows this, but now he finds himself violently, achingly, frighteningly in love with her and with it a lust he cannot begin to control and that no amount of fucking her will quench. He is sick with want, has to have her, day and night, touch her everywhere, rip off her clothes, fuck her and fuck her and fuck her, sometimes hard and desperate within moments of coming inside her.

She delights in it. She had been so afraid, so uncertain – what if he wanted her and she could not control it? Oh dear god, what if he did not want her at all? Her fears seem ridiculous now. She does everything she can to quietly encourage him, whilst leading him to half believe she is just tolerating him. She can kill him with a glance. She wears nothing beneath her dress some days and makes sure he knows it; it feels like the height of decadence to roam the house so wantonly. She leaves evidence of his lust on her skin so he can smell himself on her, see her face streaked with his seed and remember the sweet loveliness of her mouth on his cock. He finds her reading in the library, _Manfred_ again – he was always embarrassingly scared of Byron but she has no such caution, of course – he only has to see her there to drop to his knees in supplication to his goddess, she smiles at him and it is an answered prayer.

And then it is her on her knees, nuzzling her face into his crotch, licking and mouthing him through the fabric and he has to yank his trousers open and feed her his cock. She tilts her head back, letting it slide down her throat gloriously. He has to hold off from coming straight into her, just the sight of his thick cock disappearing into her beautiful beloved face and she never stops looking up at him as she sucks on him, with those big liquid eyes. She watches him all the while, she pulls back to suckle maddeningly on the head; he can see her tongue work him and feels like he might break from it. She is so good he tortures himself with the idea that she has practised on anyone else and shoves his cock back all the way into her mouth in a fit of possessive lust. She chokes just a little, enough for him to come in the instant, eyes closed, groaning, hands twisting in her hair.

-x-

He looks at her throughout the day, every inch of her precious skin hidden in those far too binding clothes. His body sobs for her, cock groaning against his trousers; his hands crackle electric with the need to touch her.

"Lucille," he says and she turns, eyes widening at the way he looks at her, the hunger in him; not just his eyes, his face, his whole body feral and throbbing and ready for her, every muscle in him tense with lust. She is instantly aroused by the nakedness of his need and the way he says her name, already a plea. She smiles; he could die a little every time she smiles.

"I need you," he says and she knows it already, her hand cupping him through his trousers and he comes in them in seconds at her touch, only half apologetic, hard again in seconds –

"I need more," he whispers, clutching at her, scrabbling at her dress – "I need all of you, all of your sweet body, my beautiful sister."

"It's –" she smiles, whispers, "it's the middle of the day."

"Yes. Let me take you to bed," she laughs with almost real pleasure;

"And you fucked me all night."

"Yes," he remembers, over and over again, they had torn strips off each other in ferocious scratching need. Just remembering makes him harder. They did not get to sleep until dawn and he woke up hard for her again.

"I can still feel you inside me." She whispers this one right in his ear. He growls, really growls, low and feral, swings her into his arms and practically marches her into the elevator. He pushes her back against the grate as it goes up, kissing and touching her hungrily.

Somehow they make it to her room; his hands shake, it hurts to let go of her even to tell her to get undressed. She looks at him, smirking, a little amused that he would order her like that- a _little_ amused, but mostly the request goes straight to her cunt. Still she does not act as instantly as she knows he would like, it makes her head spin to make him beg her and she knows that he will and –

"Please," he amends – "Please Lucille, I can't wait."

She knows he would never force her but dear god, she does not quite know what he would do if she did not get out of her dress now. She had no idea the faint concept of him being rough with her could excite her so much, even after everything, but it does. She wonders if this makes her broken but does not care for long. Still, even with wanting him as much as he does her, she makes herself take her time, makes herself drive him insane waiting for her, watching her, transfixed by her. She has never felt more powerful, not even when she killed mother. She lies back slowly, never letting go of his look as he gazes at her, almost disbelievingly.

 _Mine_ he thinks, hardly able to believe he could deserve it – _she is mine._ She reaches for him when he slides up her body, kissing a hurried, desperate path from her ankle to the base of her throat.

"You've changed," he says "I want to learn everything, I don't want to miss one inch of you."

She was so afraid that he would hate her. That she would look too different for him to love again. She still wants to cry when he proves to her that it is not so. It is so unlike anything she has known for years, every sweet and pleasant sensation feels strange still, but she craves them all with a thirst that frightens her and pushes her on all the same. The first time he thrusts into her he does not even have time to get undressed, finding time between the first and the second and then taking fresh delight in her skin against his and he holds her so close, as close as they can be and they try to vocalise this need, the need to be closer, to be so fused together that nothing will separate them but it falls apart and all they can do is fuck again.

He tells her he loves her, buried inside her, and afterwards, tenderly, gasping for breath, his head between her breasts as she runs her fingers through his hair, humming softly. She sings to him as he tells her again and at the end of the song she kisses his head and echoes him.

They sneak downstairs later that evening to find dinner, surreptitiously like they used to when they were small and so scared of being found out. Sometimes they had been found and she had, as always, taken the full force of the punishment that followed; no point in trying to remind anyone that they had been forgotten all day, left in the attic with no food. Even after the beatings she would creep back down later to at least find something for him. Even now, the heart still remembers and as they cross through the hallway he stops suddenly to ask –

"Why are we whispering?"

She stops too, realising that she is clutching his arm and that he has still asked the question in a whisper.

"I don't know," she says, then says it again, forcing herself not to whisper this time, though it feels strange and daring, almost terrifying.

"I don't know," she looks at him and he looks at her, matching eyes frightened for a second before her face breaks into a grin and his follows and they start to laugh, nervous at first but growing louder, laughing to fill the house, just because they can.

"Brother," she says, as they sit at the table, eating more than need to, again because they can – "We are going to reclaim every corner of this house in every possible way."

He looks at her _– every_ possible way? She grins and nods, he is not sure he has ever seen her so happy, it is deeply infectious.

"We'll start tomorrow," he smiles, holding her hand across the table. A light shines in her eyes, so innocently, playfully wicked; he had not been sure he would ever see that light again. She pushes their plates asides and sweeps around to sit on the edge of the table in front of him, drawing him to his feet, to her, turning her face to kiss the palm he lays against her cheek –

"We'll start _now,"_ she says.

-x-

 **I'm determined to find at least one happy head canon for these two so I've decided that in the first few years after being reunited, before the money started to really run out, they had quite an amazing time of it. As such I have at least two more chapter ideas for some Reclaiming Of Allerdale Hall which should follow shortly. I also really AM gonna finish that first time chapter at some point, I promise, I've just run into a bit of a block with it. Hence some more random porning. :-)**


	6. Chapter 6

**This chapter is the first in what will probably be a three part leading to the first time sex scene as promised, tentative warning for underage since Thomas is sixteen, which isn't underage where I live but I think is elsewhere. :-)**

 **6.**

"You've grown," she says after a beat of space too long, too strained, too closely observed by the people who brought him back here.

"So have you," he smiles shyly, and she would kill right now just to know what he is thinking. Does he even want to be back here? Did he miss her? Is she how he remembers or too different? Did he miss her, did he miss her, did he miss her? It has been tearing at her for four years, thinking that he could have been happy without her, knowing that it is wrong of her to hate the idea so much. Knowing that you're _supposed_ to want the people you love to be happy, or so she has been told. And she wants to want that but she doesn't. Not without her. If he was happy without her she is not sure which of them she would kill first. She hopes he has been miserable for her every day like she has and she hates herself for it at the same time as she does not care.

And _now._ They let her come back here alone; well she was grown up now and heir to it all, they could not keep her anyway. She has not decided yet if it is good or awful to be back, there are so many memories here, so many of them terrible. But it's good, she decides, it is good. It is not the asylum and _he_ is here and didn't they have good memories too? So many. But there are people, adults she does not know with him, watching them too carefully; she is sure it is too carefully, and is suspicious of them all. She hates them too for looking at him like they have anything to do with him. Nobody should; nobody _can,_ not really. She tries to remember, to imagine how it is they would like her to behave but she is looking at him and trying to take him in and for too long she stands there and cannot.

Because he has changed _so much._ He was a boy when she left him last, crying while she fought and screamed. He was just a beautiful boy, and now he is taller than her and his body has changed and she was not there for it and it is breaking her silently to pieces. She does not know what to do with the man he is fast turning into, only what she wants to do and she knows at least from that that she has been far from _cured_ if cure were possible for love. She had thought, on the way, she might be afraid to be thrown back here, with a strange man she would not know; it had crawled inside her, this fear, like bugs, but the bugs went the moment she saw him.

Because she _does_ know him still, his eyes are still the same, and she reassures herself that he looks at her as he always did, eyes wide and hopeful and sad, looking to her for guidance and when, in her frozen uncertainty she does not provide it he comes to her, almost in a run and throws his arms around her waist in a crushing hug. It is not hard from there to hug him back, to clutch him close and keep herself from crying. For a moment it almost seems that he is shorter than her again, and the boy she had never stopped picturing him as is burying his face in her chest. But it is not like that. She looks over his shoulder warily at the faces of the watchers and is relieved to see them smile and nod, _this is right, this is good, this is rather sweet_ their smiles seem to say and she is more than happy to let them think it, if only they would go away. It is painful to keep herself from clutching him as close as she would like, if anything could ever be close enough. She hears them talking quietly, so quietly – but she has become used to people talking about her as though she is not there, assessing her and she is good to at listening without anyone knowing that she is. She is surprised to feel a slight stiffening in Thomas and realises that he has become used to it as well, however different his circumstances have been. She feels closer to him for sharing this.

"They'll be alright," they hear and "It's really not up to us anymore," and "She seems much better," and then they are all nodding like they've convinced themselves smugly of something. They are happy in their stupid judgement and she laughs inside at how stupid they are. In her mind she slams her cleaver through them all and in truth she stands still, forcing herself to release Thomas from her arms so she can smile at them and shake their hands and say those blessed goodbyes. She feels like she is quite good at it, this pretending, but she can see that Thomas is better and cannot work out how to feel about that.

She watches them warily the whole way out the door and the carriage as it heads on out the gates, until she cannot see it anymore and when she comes back Thomas is looking at her. It is different from how he looked at her before and a lot of broken things inside her shift around beneath that gaze into what she thinks might be a better shape.

Once she is certain that they are gone she turns back around to see that he has been watching her the whole time she has been watching them. She smiles awkwardly, wanting to believe what she thinks she can see – that he cannot stop looking at her, not for a moment. It feels as though her heart has started to beat again after a long time dead – well, she had thought it was dead. She knows now that it has just been waiting, just like the house has been waiting. All of a sudden she feels very close to the house. She wishes Thomas would speak – she finds herself with no idea of what she should say.

"You're beautiful," he says, as though he can hear her wish – she remembers with a pleasant jolt that he had always had that ability, and she smiles. It feels strange to smile and to mean it, bewildering to feel the little rush of happiness. She wonders if her mouth is doing the right thing, if her eyes show the light she can feel in there. She feels so suddenly alive, so _here._ She had become used to being always absent from herself, or at least half absent, going away in her head has become such a habit it has become hard to pull herself back. But not now. She shakes her head, looking down –

"No I –" she stops, re-starts, looks up again excruciatingly shy –"So are you". So strange to be shy around him, and not quite right, but he smiles at her in delighted reply and it reminds her quite terrifyingly of everything she has ever done for him and everything she would still do. There is so little she would not do. He touches her arm gently and this time when he hugs her she melts into his arms and it is somehow subtly different from before, less innocent, though she kisses him on the cheek like the child she has never really been and rests her head on his shoulder as though she could fall asleep there.

"I missed you," he says. Her heart thrills to hear it.

"I did –" she begins and her voice chokes – "I missed you too – I missed you –" _so much_ she nearly says but the force of it makes her need to hold back tears. He rubs her back as though he could understand. She is sure that he cannot but it feels good all the same.

"I missed you every day," he says – "Wherever were you? I asked and asked – every day – and nobody would tell me. They told me to stop asking but I didn't – I couldn't – I –" She wipes her face surreptitiously on his shoulder to hear the way his voice chokes up, just the same as hers does, it could almost be her own voice if she was a man.

"Where were you?" he asks again and she hates the question, cannot look at him, cannot tell him the truth – not just yet – she cannot possibly make him sad for her when they are so happy right now. And she realises now that he _will_ be sad for her, he really will; there have been so many times when she started to doubt that he would even care, when she had doubted he would remember her or ever think about her.

"I'm sorry –" she swallows hard but she cannot stop herself crying silently as she speaks, clutching him tight, her hands scrunching into the back of his coat – "I'm so sorry – I tried to get away –" that was true at least; more than twenty times she had tried to escape that first year and more than twenty times punished for it almost beyond bearing but she does not tell him that now – "I didn't know where you were either – nobody would tell me either – I wish –" there was so much that she wished.

"I was at school," he says – "They sent me to Whitehaven – to family there – they were alright but I missed you so much. I thought about you every day –" something in his voice made her raise her head, surprised to see that he had coloured up a little, something else behind his last words that he would not say and she wondered at it. Mostly she just breathed out in relief that he had been safe. It was perfect, just what she had hoped for the most – that he had not suffered as she had but that he had not been happy without her all the same. He sees her looking and hides his burning face in her neck.

"I suppose –" she says slowly, heart not really in it – "At some point you might have to let me go –" she meant the hug of course, it had gone on so long but yes, she supposed they could not stand in the hallway like this.

"No!" he says and the force of it surprises her, he holds her even closer – "No never, never again". There is something so fierce, so adult in his voice that she cannot argue it, does not want to, it sends little thrills through her chest and all the way down her body and she could not break the embrace now if she wanted to. They stay like that for a long time, finally sliding down so they are on their knees in the hallway, arms still wrapped tightly around each other. In the end it hurts to let go and they keep a fierce hold of each other's hand.

"Where do we go now?" she asks, realising she is asking him to make a decision possibly for the first time in their lives.

"I thought we'd take our things up – to the attic," he says. She frowns;

"Why the attic?" a hint of sharpness creeping into her voice. Then she looks at him and it melts away, she can see it still has not occurred to him that they could be allowed anywhere else – "Thomas –" she whispers as though it is a wonderful secret, cupping his face in her hand – "We can go _anywhere –_ the whole house is _ours –_ they even gave me the keys."

He looks at them now in her hand, still frowning, struggling to get used to the idea –

"We could –" he says slowly.

"Yes?"

His eyes widen –

"We could _explore."_

She breaks into a grin and puts her hand over her mouth in surprise to feel it;

"Yes!" the idea thrills her, both of them, they look sideways at each other, grinning mischievously as though it were an operation of terrible daring, and it is, there is so much of the house they have never seen.

And all that day they explore, walking the corridors hand in hand feeling tiny, two children lost in this enormous place that should have had all the familiarity of home but which is a labyrinth of rooms and corridors they have never seen. They go from room to room, opening doors and leaving them unlocked, then they go over it all again just so Lucille can keep a count, numbering each room as she goes. She finds herself needing to touch everything, to stake a claim on it, whilst Thomas just watches her always, wondering at her daring.

In the end they still take their things up to the attic.

_x_

 **This was gonna be one chapter in which they get reunited leading to first time sex but it's already got so long I'm splitting it up – maybe into three chapters. I'm wondering if I should actually post these in a separate story instead as it'll be a few coherent chapters of the same thing – maybe as well as posting them here? What do people think?**

 **By the way, since I've not mentioned it recently, anyone wanting to come find me on tumblr, I'm** ** _shadow-in-the-shade._** **:-)**


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